Pioneer's Online
Discussion Forum talks about
today's key issues... join
now to let us know what YOU
think!

Now discussing: Granting
autonomy to Kashmir...

More power to girls' education

Suhas
Chakma

Union
Human Resource Development Minister Murli Manohar
Joshi reportedly took umbrage to UNESCO's 2003
Education For All Monitoring Report and flayed the
organisation for making allegedly wrong
projections on India. Dr Joshi stated that the
UNESCO findings that India will not be able to
achieve gender parity targets for both the primary
and secondary levels even by 2015, were based on
outdated facts and projections. UNESCO had cited
India's overall literacy rate at 52 per cent
against 65 per cent according to 2001 census. Dr
Joshi also claimed that India would have an equal
number of girls and boys going to school by
2015.

However, once the
much-vaunted statistics of 2001 Census are decoded, the
UNESCO projection does not appear to be far from the
truth. The Constitution made it obligatory for the
Government to provide free and compulsory education to
all children until the age of 14. This was to be
achieved by the year 1960, but could not be achieved and
the target dates had to be repeatedly extended to 1990.
The National Policy on Education, 1986, again extended
the target date to 1995. The modified Education Policy,
1992, further revised the target date so as to achieve
compulsory education for all children upto 14 years of
age by the end of 20th century.

Although female
literacy improved to 54.16 per cent in 2001 from 39.2
per cent in 1991, it was quite low compared to that of
75.85 per cent in respect of males. Further, out of 203
million added to the literate population during
1991-2001, 107 million were males and 95 million were
females. The contribution to the total decrease of 31
million illiterates during this period was respectively
21 million males as compared to the 10 million females.
An estimated 60 million children were still out of
schools, of which, 35 million were girls. The problems
relating to drop outs, low levels of learning
achievement, and low participation of girls, tribals and
other disadvantaged groups persisted.

The Department of
Elementary Education and Literacy have informed the
Parliamentary Committee on Empowerment of Women that as
per the latest educational statistics, the population of
children in the age group 6-14 is 19.2 crore. Of these
15.7 crore children are enrolled in schools and the
number of out of school children in the age group 6-14
is 3.5 crore of which 2.5 crore are girls.

The National Policy
on Education, 1986, as modified in 1992, envisages the
concept of national system of education which implies
that all students irrespective of caste, creed, location
and sex have access to education of a comparable
quality. It took 11 years for the Department of
Education to formulate a scheme for education of girls
at the elementary level. The Expenditure Finance
Committee has recently approved the budget and the
programme is still to be implemented.

The Kothari
Commission on Education (1964-66) recommended that the
investment on education should be gradually increased so
as to reach to the level of six per cent of GDP. The
National Policy on Education, 1986, also reiterated the
investment on education be increased to six per cent of
the GDP against the then allocation of only 3.3 per
cent. After 34 years of Kothari Commission's
recommendations, the allocation for education remains at
only 3.8 per cent of GDP.

The problem does not
lie only with lack of resources but also with improper
utilisation of meagre funds sanctioned by the
Government. Not only are allocations earmarked for
education inadequate, even the funds allotted for
Secondary Education from 1995-1996 to 1999-2000 were not
fully and properly utilised.

Although the
Government has launched various schemes/programmes such
as the National Literacy Mission, Mahila Samakhya,
Operation Blackboard, Non-formal Education, Lok Jumbish
and District Primary Education Programme to universalise
education, the Parliamentary Committee expressed
disappointment that the Department of Elementary
Education and Literacy in their Action Taken reply have
simply repeated the objectives of the Sarva Shiksha
Abhiyan and have not informed as to what concrete steps
have been taken so far to achieve the objectives of the
programme. The involvement of grassroots institutions
such as Panchayati Raj was limited only to West Bengal
and Kerala.

In addition, Dalits
and Adivasis suffer serious discrimination. In its 2002
India Education Report, the National Institute of
Educational Planning and Administration stated that
discrimination continues to obstruct the access of Dalit
children to schooling. They lag behind the general
population by as much as 15 percentage points in
literacy. Barely 24 per cent of Dalit women were
literate, according to the 1991 Census.

Of the 900 million
illiterates in the world, almost one-third belongs to
India. Yet, in July 2003, India required over 1.1
millions primary school teachers. Rather than flay the
UNESCO report, we should take a hard look at home made
14th report of the Parliamentary Committee on
Empowerment of Women of the Lok Sabha.